The MSI GP75 Leopard is gaming laptop with some powerful specs inside and definitely
punching above its weight in gaming performance, so let’s check it out in this detailed review
and help you decide if it’s a laptop you should consider.
I’ve got the 9SF model, so we’ve got an Intel i7-9750H CPU, Nvidia RTX 2070 graphics,
no Max-Q here and 16gb of memory running in dual channel. For storage there’s a 1TB
NVMe M.2 SSD, and a 17.3” 1080p 144Hz IPS-level screen.
For network connectivity it’s got gigabit ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 5.
There are a few different configurations available though, you can find examples and updated
prices linked in the description.
The lid of the laptop is a matte black, while the interior is this sort of silver plastic,
which I liked over MSI’s usual all black colour scheme. All edges and corners were
rounded, no sharp spots anywhere, and the build quality seemed good for a primarily
plastic machine.
The weight is listed at 2.6kg on the MSI website, though mine came in under this. With the large
280 watt power brick and cables for charging included the total weight rises by over a
kilo.
The dimensions of the laptop are 39.7cm in width, 26.8cm in depth, and 2.9cm high, so
a little thicker than other machines I’ve tested recently which hopefully means improved
cooling. The screen bezels look very thin, at first glance I actually thought I was looking
at a 15 inch machine, and I measured them at about 8mm on the sides.
The 17.3” 1080p 144Hz IPS-level screen has a matte finish, acceptable viewing angles,
though no G-Sync.
I’ve measured the colour gamut using the Spyder 5 Pro, and my results returned 96%
of sRGB and 73% of AdobeRGB. At 100% brightness in the center I measured 301 nits with a 820:1
contrast ratio, so decent results for a gaming laptop, and much nicer than the TN panels
MSI were often using in older models.
Backlight bleed wasn’t ideal, the patches down the bottom left and right corners was
occasionally noticeable while viewing darker content, but this will vary between laptop
and panel.
There was a bit of screen flex, honestly not bad considering that the lid is on the thinner
side, the hinges being out towards the corners help with stability and they felt quite sturdy.
It wasn’t possible to open it up with one finger, demonstrating more weight is distributed
towards the back, as both the heatpipes and battery are found there, though no issue sitting
it on my lap.
Despite the top screen bezel being on the thinner side, MSI were still able to fit the
camera and microphone here.
The camera looks pretty average and the audio sounds decent.
The keyboard has per key RGB lighting which even lights up secondary function on all keys.
I’ve said it before, but I think MSI have one of the nicest looking RGB keyboards, it
will of course come down to personal preference, but the lighting is bright and can be seen
on the edges of the keys. The keyboard worked well and I liked typing with it, here’s
how it sounds to give you an idea of what to expect.
There are some additional buttons on the top right below the power button, including a
shortcut to cycle through keyboard lighting effects, and a button to enable coolerboost
mode which sets the fan speed to maximum. Both of these can be done through software,
but I found it nice to have a dedicated button available, which makes it easy to change while
in a game for example.
There was a little keyboard flex, nothing too bad but it depends on where you push it,
no issues during normal use though.
The touchpad has precision drivers, was smooth to the touch and worked very well. The touch
pad itself does not click down, however there are separate left and right click buttons
below it which are very tactile feeling and give an audible click.
Fingerprints were harder to see on the interior due to the silver colour, however they would
show up with the slightest touch on the black metal lid and were also harder to wipe off
there.
On the left there’s loads of I/O, from the back there’s a kensington lock, air exhaust
vent, gigabit ethernet port, HDMI 2.0 and mini DisplayPort outputs, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A
and Type-C port, no Thunderbolt though, and 3.5mm headphone and mic jacks.
On the right there’s a full size SD card slot, two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports, air exhaust
vent and the power input right at the back.
On the back there are just air exhaust vents towards the corners and Leopard text in the
center, while on the front there’s just some status LEDs in the middle.
The matte black metal lid looked really nice in my opinion, it’s got more of a subtle
design compared to many of MSI’s previous models. The logo in the center lights up white
from the backlight of the screen, so cannot be controlled.
Underneath there are some air intake vents directly above the two fans at the back, as
well as some other random vents closer to the front.
The two three watt speakers are found towards the front left and right corners, they sound
alright though a bit tinny sounding, and they get very loud, here’s what we’re looking
at with maximum volume while playing music, and the Latencymon results didn’t look great.
The bottom panel can be removed by taking out 13 screws with a phillips head screwdriver,
and the two at the back corners are shorter than the rest. Once inside from left to right,
there’s a 2.5 inch drive bay, WiFi card, two memory slots, and two M.2 slots, one supports
both PCIe and SATA while the other is PCIe only, while the battery is found right up
the back.
Powering the laptop is that 6 cell 51 Watt hour battery. I’ve tested it with the screen
brightness at 50%, background apps disabled, and all RGB lighting off. While streaming
YouTube videos I was only seeing 3 hours and 38 minutes, not a great result, and that’s
with the Intel integrated graphics due to Nvidia Optimus.
While playing the Witcher 3 with medium settings and Nvidia’s battery boost set to 30 FPS
the battery lasted for 59 minutes, again lower than usual, but at least it maintained 30
FPS the entire time.
The 280 watt power brick that MSI include with the laptop honestly seems to be overkill
for these specs, I never saw any battery drain during any of my testing.
Let’s move onto the thermal testing. Just for a recap of the cooling design, air comes
in through the bottom and is exhausted out the two vents on the back corners and side
vents on both the left and right. Inside we’ve got 7 heatpipes in total, with one of these
shared between the CPU and GPU.
The MSI Dragon Center software allows you to customize the fan speed, I’ve tested
with fans either at automatic speed or with coolerboost mode enabled which basically sets
the fan speed to maximum. I’ve also tested with turbo mode enabled, which overclocks
the GPU by 100MHz on the core and 200MHz on the memory.
Thermal testing was completed in an ambient room temperature of 22 degrees Celsius, so
expect different results in different environments. I’ve tested idle down the bottom and the
results were about normal. The rest of the results are from combined CPU and GPU workloads
and are meant to represent worst case scenarios as I ran them for extended periods of time.
The gaming results towards the upper half of the graph were tested by playing Watch
Dogs 2, as I find it to use a good combination of processor and graphics. The stress test
results shown on the lower half of the graph are from running the Aida64 CPU stress test
with only the stress CPU option checked, and the Heaven GPU benchmark at max settings at
the same time to fully load the system, so kind of a worst case scenario.
Starting at the bottom with the stress tests running and fans in auto mode we’re seeing
the hottest temperatures, and while power limit throttling was hit on the CPU, intermittent
thermal throttling was happening. By enabling coolerboost to max out the fans we’re able
to lower the temperatures slightly. Undervolting the CPU didn’t really change the temperatures,
and when combined with a cooling pad they drop down just a couple of degrees on the
CPU. Similar results with the gaming tests, though in this particular game thermal throttling
wasn’t being reached.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown. As the main limit with
the stress tests running was the power limitation of 45 watts, we’re not seeing any change
in the stress test by boosting fan speed, it’s the undervolt to the CPU that improves
performance most, allowing us to hit the full 4GHz all core turbo boost speed of the i7-9750H.
These are the average TDP values reported by hardware info during these same tests.
Basically nothing really changes until we undervolt the CPU, it lowers a bit below the
45 watt limit as power limit throttling is only just removed, and then there appears
to be less of a requirement for CPU power in the game tests, as identified by the lower
TDP values there.
Here’s what we’re looking at with CPU only performance using Cinebench. With the
turbo mode the 9750H was around other laptops I’ve tested, most seem to be around the
2800 mark at stock, however once undervolted we were able to achieve an 11% higher score.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle it
was quite cool, at the usual 30 degree average. With the stress tests going and fan at auto
speed the keyboard gets to the mid 40s, so warm to the touch but not really a problem.
While gaming with the fan at max speed it’s perhaps a little cooler, though quite similar.
As for the fan noise produced by the laptop, I’ll let you have a listen to some of these
tests.
At idle the fans were usually silent, however they would ramp just slightly at times. With
the stress test running and fans on automatic the noise level is fairly average compared
to many other gaming laptops I’ve tested, while with the fan set to maximum with cooler
boost mode it’s a bit louder.
Overall the GP75 with these specs is running on the warmer side in these tests, however
as we’re about to see, this is probably fair considering the high levels of performance
the specs are able to provide us.
Next let’s take a look at some gaming benchmarks. I’ve tested with turbo mode enabled, which
does overclock the graphics, and with coolerboost enabled, so maximum fan speed.
The Division 2 was tested with the built in benchmark, and this game is a recent addition
for me. From what I’ve seen so far ultra settings always seems to have much lower 1%
low results compared to average FPS. Despite this the averages at ultra and high were noticeably
better over the other lower powered machines tested in this game.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode, and the results here were very good, as we’ll
see later when we compare against some other laptops. Even RTX was playing ok at higher
settings, just below a 60 FPS average with high settings, though if you want best performance
with decent looks leaving RTX off and just using ultra is the way to go.
Apex Legends was tested with either all settings at maximum, or all settings on the lowest
possible values, as it doesn’t have predefined setting presets. It was playing very well,
I seem to test in a more demanding area, because even lower specced machines will hit the 144
FPS cap at times at different areas, so these are great results where I test.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built in benchmark, and the results here
are again quite good, though a bit lower at lower settings compared to even lower specced
machines, which seems to indicate possibly lower CPU power in games while the powerful
GPU holds it up at higher settings.
Far Cry New Dawn was tested with the built in benchmark. This game seems to be fairly
CPU heavy, and while we’re not seeing much higher results compared to other lower specced
laptops, the extra GPU power does seem to help more at higher settings.
Fortnite was tested with the replay feature, and at max settings it was working extremely
well, easily surpassing 100 FPS for the 1% low at max settings in my test, absolutely
no issues at all in this less demanding game.
Overwatch is another well optimized game and was tested in the practice range, again extremely
nice frame rates for a laptop are being seen here, with almost 200 FPS at max settings,
while low was reaching the 300 frame cap.
CS:GO was tested using the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and again pretty good results, above average
over most other laptops given the specs, though not really by much considering how much extra
GPU power there is, as this is more of a CPU driven test.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built in benchmark. Even with maximum ultra settings
we’re getting well above 100 FPS for the 1% low on a 100% render scale, so great performance
once more.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built in benchmark, and as a CPU heavy
test the results at lower settings aren’t too different from many other machines, however
the extra GPU power does put it in front at higher levels.
Dota 2 was tested playing in the middle lane with an average amount of action going on,
and was playing quite well even with ultra settings with very high frame rates and no
issues that I could notice.
Watch Dogs 2 uses a lot of resources, though the results were still pretty good here, with
above 60 FPS averages at ultra settings it was playing perfectly fine maxed out.
The Witcher 3 was also playing well at ultra settings, and I’ve found this one to work
favourably with more GPU power, which was also the case here. Even ultra settings was
running above 100 FPS and playing great.
If you’re after more gaming benchmarks check the card in the top right corner where I’ve
tested 20 games in total.
Let’s also take a look at how this config of the MSI GP75 compares with other laptops
to see how it stacks up, use these results as a rough guide only as they were tested
at different times with different drivers.
In Battlefield 5 I’ve got the GP75 highlighted in red near similarly specced machines. It’s
performing quite well in this game, actually coming out in first place in terms of average
FPS out of these specific laptops shown, so basically beating 2080 Max-Q machines with
G-Sync. The 1% low isn’t quite as impressive, though it’s still up there.
These are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings in the built in benchmark.
Again we’re seeing great results here, with the GP75 coming in at third place. It’s
behind the Razer Blade Pro 17 with a Max-Q 2070, but keep in mind it’s running with
a much higher than normal power limit for that GPU, is also overclocked, but also has
the CPU undervolted by default. Otherwise the 1% low was in second place out of all
machines, and still outperforming MSI’s GS75 with 2080 Max-Q.
These are the results from Shadow of the Tomb raider with the built in benchmark at highest
settings. Once more very good results here, with the GP75 clearly ahead of the other two
2070 machines I’ve tested just below it, the ASUS Scar III and Aorus 15. This time
it’s performing equally to the blade pro, but not quite able to keep up with the 2080
Max-Q machines.
Overall the GP75 is performing very well here, the full RTX 2070 is performing a fair bit
better over the other two 2070 laptops I’ve tested, and the only difference I can really
pinpoint is that MSI are overclocking the GPU with turbo mode, which is clearly helping.
I’ve also got the results from 3DMark’s Fire Strike, Time Spy, Port Royal and VRMark,
overall good results again, especially in the graphics scores thanks to the overclocked
2070.
As we saw earlier we’ve got the option of undervolting the CPU to help improve performance,
so let’s see what this actually does in games.
I’ve tested Far Cry 5 with the built in benchmark at 1080p. Basically there’s no
real difference, at least in this specific title. Results were mostly within margin of
error in terms of average FPS at low, normal and high settings, with what appears to be
a slightly higher improvement at ultra. I admit this surprised me a little considering
the lower results at lower settings mentioned earlier which would appear to be due to the
CPU performance, but undervolting didn’t seem to help.
I’ve used Crystal Disk Mark to test the storage, and the 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD was performing
quite well, while the SD card wasn’t doing too well with my V90 card, though still better
than not having one at all.
For updated pricing check the links in the description, as prices will change over time.
At the time of recording in the US I could only find the 9SD model with 1660 Ti for around
$1500 USD. I’m not too sure of the specs available around the world, however this model
is available here in Australia for $4000 AUD. For my international viewers once you remove
our tax and convert the currency that’s around $2500 USD, however tech in general
does cost more here too compared to the US which has not been factored in so it’d be
less than this rough guess.
With all of that information in mind, let's review the good and the bad aspects of this
machine. Overall, I personally like the design, the metal lid and silver interior are more
subtle compared to previous MSI designs, though the plastic interior did flex while pushing
it in some areas, though this wasn’t a problem practically.
The thin screen bezel was great, at first I honestly thought I was looking at a 15 inch
machine as it’s smaller than many 17 inch models I’ve used, though the backlight bleed
in my unit was unfortunate, however that will always vary between units.
The battery life was quite poor compared to many other machines I’ve tested, and it
can run on the warmer side while under high levels of load. This seems to be due to the
high end specs we’ve got inside though, so we are able to get very high levels of
performance in games out of the RTX 2070.
The keyboard and touchpad worked well, I personally thought the lighting looked good and has a
lot of different effects, there’s a good selection of I/O, most of which is on the
left and away from your mouse hand if your right handed, and having a dedicated button
to quickly boost fan speed was nice to have.
Given the performance is above other similarly specced machines I’ve tested, it will be
interesting to see how the price stacks up in the US compared to those.
Let me know what you thought about MSI’s GP75 leopard 9SF gaming laptop down in the
comments, and if you’re new to the channel consider getting subscribed for future laptop
reviews and tech videos like this one.